A light-hearted review of Australian and world football by a particularly tragic follower of both...

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Taking Charge - update

Perhaps Mark Shield felt that, given the physicality of the A-League so far, he needed to impose his authority on last night's game from the outset.

The result, however, was not a well-behaved game, but a spiteful and dissent-ridden match, due to Shield's hopeless inconsistency.

With Steve Corica's sending-off I won't argue. It was perhaps a little harsh, but slamming his studs into Steve Pantelidis's thigh was very foolish. Yet the play had already been pulled up for a blatantly deliberate shirt-pull on Corica by Grant Brebner, the sort of infraction which always deserves a yellow card (just ask Dino Djulbic). After flashing the red at Corica, Shield let Brebner off (although, significantly, the Scotsman did pick up a yellow a few minutes later).

Then Joseph Keenan received a yellow card for probably the best tackle of the evening!

A draconian approach is pointless if the referee fails the consistency test, and last night was a classic example.

In a small aside, the author of the emotive match report in the Sun-Herald needs a brief history lesson. In attempting to stir up indignation re Corica's dismissal, he writes:

Steve Corica - one of the fairest players in the country - was sent off for a foul on Melbourne's Steve Pantelidis.

Corica has, in fact, been guilty of some pretty reprehensible behaviour on the pitch in the course of the A-League. He was sent off in the first season against Newcastle for a dreadful challenge on Mateo Corbo, and saw red against the same side in season two after offering some four-letter comments on Matthew Breeze's refereeing performance.

Like so many creative players, Corica lets his temper get the better of him occasionally.

Not only was the journalist (Sygall?) wrong on Corica, I have to say that it was one of the most poorly conceived and written football reports in a major newspaper I have ever read.

"Not surprisingly, the players started trying to milk free kicks, degenerating the contest" is just one of the many examples of poor expression.

On the game itself - Shield did go card happy but as you have noted the red card is hard to argue against. I don't think the yellow cards themselves had much of an effect on the outcome but probably did not help the standard of the game.

The Victory are still grinding out results even though they are still well below the high standard of last year. I am yet to be convinced of Hernandez's value yet but he is at least improving. And yes, we do miss Fred.

I have only seen highlights of the game but numerous ones of the Corica incident and to describe Corica's actions as 'stud showing' is a gross euphemism. It was more like a karate side kick into his opponent, premidated and wholly deliberate. He knew exactly what he was doing. And for that he should get a nice ban regardless of the actual damage he caused. I think he is very lucky he did not cause more a lot damage done he did.